Cartoonist W. A. Rogers spoofs Adlai Stevenson as a modern-day Rip Van
Winkle. Stevenson, the vice
president of the United States during Grover Cleveland's second term
(1893-1897), had just been nominated again in 1900 as the Democratic vice
presidential nominee. The literary allusion
emphasizes Stevenson's advanced age (nearly 65) and exaggerates his years absent
from elective office (three as opposed to Rip Van Winkle's slumber of 20).

Stevenson was born on October
23, 1835, in Christian County, Kentucky, where he attended the common
school as a youngster. In 1852, at the age of sixteen, he moved
with his family to Bloomington, Illinois, where he helped them operate a
sawmill. He attended Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington,
and then transferred to Centre College, a Presbyterian school in
Danville, Kentucky.

Stevenson also studied law, and
was admitted to the Illinois state bar in 1858. His legal practice
covered the Bloomington vicinity in central Illinois, allowing him to
interact with notable Illinois attorneys, such as Abraham Lincoln and
Stephen Douglas. As a Democrat, Stevenson campaigned for Douglas
in 1858 during the senator's successful reelection bid against Lincoln, his
Republican challenger.

In 1860-1864, Stevenson served
in his first public office as master in chancery (an appointed legal
assistant for an equity court). The next year, he won his first
elective office, serving as the local district attorney
(1865-1868). At the end of his term, Stevenson returned to private
practice, joining James Ewing to form the partnership of Stevenson &
Ewing, which quickly established itself as one of Illinois's most
prestigious law firms.

Stevenson was elected to
Congress in 1874 as part of the Democratic takeover of the House of
Representatives during an economic depression. In 1876, the
"coattail" effect of Republican presidential nominee
Rutherford B. Hayes, who carried Stevenson's district, caused the
Illinois Democrat to lose his seat by less than one percent. In
1878, though, Stevenson regained his congressional seat, running on both
the Democratic and Greenback-Labor tickets. In 1880 and 1882, he
again narrowly lost in reelection campaigns.

In 1885, President Grover Cleveland appointed Stevenson to the
position of first assistant postmaster general. As a key source of
political patronage, the Post Office was a major battleground in the
fight over civil service reform (merit appointments and tenure).
Stevenson's partisan selection of Democrats to fill 40,000 postmaster
jobs earned him the ire of reformers, who described him as "an
official axman who beheaded Republican officeholders with the precision
and dispatch of the French guillotine in the days of the
Revolution." In retaliation, Senate Republicans refused to
confirm Stevenson's nomination as judge for the supreme court of the
District of Columbia. He was replaced as assistant postmaster in
1889 when Republican Benjamin Harrison became president.

When Democrats renominated
Cleveland for president in 1892, they named Adlai Stevenson as his
vice-presidential running mate. They hoped that Stevenson's
support of "soft money" (increasing the money supply with
greenbacks or silver coins to relieve the burdens of personal debt)
would balance Cleveland's firm "hard money" stance (using the
gold standard to preserve economic stability and prosperity). When
Democrats learned that Republicans planned to make an issue of
Stevenson's soft-money views, the vice-presidential candidate agreed to
sign a statement backing Cleveland's position.

As vice president (1893-1897), Stevenson was praised for presiding with
courtesy and fairness over the Senate. The second Cleveland administration
was burdened with a national economic depression, and the president rarely
consulted his vice president, whose soft-money sentiments he distrusted.
When asked late in the administration whether Cleveland sought Stevenson's
advice, the vice president sardonically replied, "Not yet, but there are
still a few weeks of my term remaining."

In 1896, Stevenson's name was floated as a presidential candidate,
but failed to generate sufficient support. After the Democratic
National Convention chose William Jennings Bryan, Stevenson loyally
assisted the Democratic nominee's unsuccessful campaign against
Republican William McKinley. In 1900, the Democrats again
nominated Bryan
for president. A few months before,
the Populist Party had nominated Bryan for president and Charles Towne,
a Minnesota "silver" Republican, for vice president.
While Bryan preferred his friend, Towne, Stevenson was the popular
choice of the Democratic delegates, and the Minnesota Republican dropped
out of the race. In November, the Bryan-Stevenson ticket lost to the Republican
ticket of William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.

After the 1900 election, Stevenson resumed his legal practice in
Illinois. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1908, and then
retired. Stevenson died on June 14, 1914, in Chicago. He was
the grandfather of Adlai Stevenson II, an Illinois governor and the
Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956, and the great-grandfather
of Adlai Stevenson III, a U.S. senator from Illinois (1970-1981).